Part 17 (1/2)
”It's not even cold,” he said. ”Just about room temperature.”
”Room temperature didn't do this,” Wickstrom said, showing the square inch of seeping redness at the heel of his left hand.
”The same thing as when you had the bar, George,” said Gabrielle. ”You were the only one who could feel the change in it, the only one it harmed.”
”We're stuck, chillun,” Wickstrom said with a laugh. ”We ain't gettin' out of here nohow noway. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d's got us where it wants us now. Christ, if it's up there”-he pointed toward the attic above-”then it's all around.”
”Let's go down to the kitchen,” said Gabrielle, despair in her voice. ”There's ointment in the first aid kit for your burns, George, and we can bandage your hand, Kelly.” She looked up at the gaping hole in the ceiling. ”And afterward we can cover that up.”
If either of the men thought such a gesture would be foolish, they didn't say so.
Chapter Eleven.
”We've got to make plans now,” McNeely said after Gabrielle had treated and bandaged their wounds. They were sitting around the huge fireplace in the Great Hall. Every light in the room was on, and Kelly was tossing one last log onto the fire they'd built. They'd talked briefly during the wound dressing about the chimney escape and had decided, after what had happened on the third floor, not to attempt it. Even if there were a way to get up and into the attic, what was to guarantee that the copper would not become instantaneously hot enough to fry the climber? So they had built a fire, Gabrielle had made cocoa, and the three of them sat closely together, watching the flames dance on the broad stone stage of the fireplace.
”Well, we'd planned to escape,” Wickstrom said dryly. ”If our other plans work as well, we'll all be dead by sunrise. Whenever it is.”
Gabrielle ignored the jibe. ”What kind of plans, George?”
”We're here for a reason,” McNeely said, concentrating on each word. ”Here because it wants us here, because it can't let us go, because it needs us somehow.”
”You don't know that,” Wickstrom grunted.
”If you can come up with something better, let me know,” said McNeely without anger. ”Now, it got hold of c.u.mmings when he was alone. And it'll probably try to do the same to us. So I think we ought to try to spend as much time together as we can . . . short of sleep time and personal needs of course.”
”Sure we shouldn't have a permanent buddy system, George?” asked Wickstrom. ”It might try to get us in the john, y'know.”
”That might be truer than you think. It could approach us anywhere. And even being together is no guarantee as far as I'm concerned. I don't think we'll be approached when we're together, but I don't know either.”
Gabrielle opened her mouth to speak, then took a sip of cocoa instead.
”What is it?” McNeely asked.
”I was just wondering, how strong can this thing really be? I mean, could it destroy us all if it wanted to?”
McNeely shook his head. ”Not physically, I'm betting. But what it can do to our minds is another story. I don't know why, but I keep thinking that will has an awful lot to do with it. If we refuse to have anything to do with these things, then maybe there isn't that much that they can do to harm us.”
”That's a lot of guessing and not much knowing,” Wickstrom said with a trace of petulance. ”Let's face it, George, Gabrielle, we don't really know s.h.i.+t about what's here. h.e.l.l, maybe it could turn us all into jelly in the next second for all we know. Maybe . . .”
”No,” said Gabrielle. ”It couldn't do that.”
”Why the h.e.l.l not?”
”If it could, it wouldn't be playing cat and mouse with us. It would simply make us do what it wanted.”
”Oh, come on! How do you know it's even sane enough to know the difference between cat and mouse and bash 'em on the head? I mean, I can't make any sense at all of what's been happening here, and you two are already writing a book!”
”Look,” said McNeely, holding up his hands, ”we probably don't have enough input to make any real sense of what's been happening, so we can only theorize, Kelly. But we've got to start somewhere.”
”Why? What's so f.u.c.king important that we know? I don't think we can know. Why don't we just stick together as much as we can, and try to get through the next week or so without going crazy? I don't know about you, but I just want to forget all this stuff and concentrate on other things, like how I'm gonna spend my money when I get out-think pleasant thoughts, y'know? What my mother used to tell me when I'd have a nightmare, and Christ knows this's been a nightmare all right. So if you think we oughta stick together, George, well f.u.c.kin'-A with me. I hate being in this place alone.” He stopped talking at last. His face had gotten red, and his frantic gestures had worked the adhesive tape loose from the gauze that covered his ripped hand. ”Okay,” he said, ”okay, that's enough of a speech. I'll do whatever you two want to do as long as it keeps us safe and sane. All right?”
McNeely nodded. ”We'll set up a schedule. We'll eat together, be together as much as possible when we're awake.” He looked at Gabrielle, a question in his eyes. She read it immediately and nodded. ”Kelly, there's another thing. A complication you should know about.”
Wickstrom smiled tensely. ”I think I know already. You two ... you two are more than, uh, just friends, right?”
McNeely was surprised, and tried in vain to hide it. ”Yes. Yes, that's true. But how did you ...”
Wickstrom chuckled and relaxed a bit. ”You hide most things real well, George, but that one was obvious.” He glanced at Gabrielle and was amazed to find a splash, of pink on the sophisticated cheeks. ”It doesn't matter, okay? I don't need to know any more than I already know.”
”It must look awful,” Gabrielle said. ”So soon after David.”
”You don't owe me any explanation. And you don't owe your husband an apology. It's just the way things are.”
And the three of them sat there with their separate thoughts, Wickstrom's about another wife who'd been unfaithful, Gabrielle's about another lover with whom she'd cheated a living husband, and McNeely's about an unfamiliar weakness that at last let his features betray his thoughts.
They spent as much time together as was realistically possible. McNeely and Gabrielle, except for bathroom privacies, were never apart, and Wickstrom was with them except when they all slept. Gabrielle had moved into the Whitetail Suite with McNeely, so the three of them all occupied the west wing only. They ate together, played games together, read books together-McNeely was reading aloud The Brothers Karamazov, which neither Wickstrom nor Gabrielle had read-and when one was tired, the others usually were as well. If Wickstrom awoke first, he would rap softly on the door of McNeely and Gabrielle's suite. If there was no answer, he would return to his own rooms and read, and within a short time they would knock on his door. Then they would have breakfast together.
Wickstrom had been concerned that he would be approached the first time he was alone again in his rooms, but nothing happened. He had slept soundly and dreamlessly, or at least he had thought until he opened his eyes from sleep and saw another face gazing down into his.
It was not the same face that he had seen before at that time in that position. This one was a pale face with straw-colored hair and sky-blue eyes, a young face with features so fair that it was all the more shocking to see the unmistakable stamp of madness on them.
But it vanished as quickly and completely as the other had, leaving him with a pounding heart and the thought that it must be only the least unforgotten fragment of a dream. And since it was a dream, he saw no point in telling the others.
Just as the others saw no point in telling him or each other about the faces they saw on awakening.
Several sleeps later the three of them sat in the white playroom on the third floor. Breakfast was far enough removed so that they no longer felt full, but recent enough so that there was no hunger in any of them for the next meal. Like savages, they lived by their stomachs. McNeely was in the middle of one of a row of Edgar Wallace thrillers he'd discovered in the library, and Wickstrom was doing a crossword puzzle, working his way through a paperback book full of them, throwing away each page as he completed it. Though McNeely's attention was held fast by Wallace's prose, Wickstrom glanced up from his puzzle frequently to check Gabrielle's progress with her still life.
She'd resumed her drawing six sleeps previously, had finished her preliminary sketches, and was now putting the finis.h.i.+ng touches on the large blue bound volumes she'd positioned on the table. Wickstrom had marveled at her ability to turn pigment into the reproduction of realism that was forming on the canvas, and now, as she brought more and more tone and shading to what had been only bare outlines, he was finding it impossible to deal with his puzzle at all.
Finally the last bit of color left her brush to settle on the canvas, and there were the books, burnished leather gleaming in the light, every pore of the binding pulsing with energy as though it were once more the living skin of the beast it had clothed.
”My G.o.d,” he said in awe. ”Gabrielle, that is incredible.”
McNeely glanced up from his book. His eyes widened as he saw the painting, and then narrowed in intense scrutiny. ”It's clearer than a photograph,” he said. ”It makes the superrealists look like Monet. And yet,” he went on, rising and crossing to the easel, ”there's more to it than that. It looks more than real.”
Gabrielle smiled, embarra.s.sed by the praise. ”It is good. It's far better than anything I've ever done.” She wondered if it might be because there was no more David to make her work seem so unimportant. ”But it's not finished, you know. I've still got to paint the instruments.”
McNeely stepped next to the table. ”May I take the books? Are you finished with them?” She nodded, reminding him not to disturb the s.e.xtant, and he picked the volumes up, bringing them back behind the easel and holding the reality up to the image. ”I hate to gush,” he said, ”but this knocks me out.”
Wickstrom looked at the comparison and shook his head in wonder. ”A good thing you paint still lifes, Gabrielle. If you painted anything alive, it'd probably step down off the canvas.”
”Don't say that, Kelly,” McNeely joked. ”In this place it probably would.”
Wickstrom and Gabrielle laughed. They were all finally able to joke again, even about the house and their being trapped within it. It was the timelessness that had made it so easy. When it seemed as though things had happened either a moment or a year before, it was easier and less painful to imagine the latter. ” 'We have always lived in the castle,' ” McNeely had quoted once when they'd been discussing the phenomenon, and although neither Gabrielle nor Wickstrom seemed to recognize the allusion, they understood it well enough.